“Beyond Mechanical Markets” by Roman Frydman and Michael D. Goldberg (Princeton). A groundbreaking look at how to tame asset
booms and busts.

“Boomerang” by Michael Lewis (Allen Lane/Norton). The
author of “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short” returns with a
collection of writings on his journeys through “the New Third
World,” from Iceland and Ireland to California.

“Civilization” by Niall Ferguson (Allen Lane). The prolific
Harvard historian explains how the West came to dominate the
globe.

“Confidence Men” by Ron Suskind (Harper). An inside look at
how Barack Obama came under the spell of Timothy Geithner and
Lawrence Summers, “two men whose actions had contributed to the
very financial disaster they were hired to solve.”

“Exorbitant Privilege” by Barry Eichengreen (Oxford). A
brisk primer on the dollar’s role as the dominant international
currency.

“Extreme Money” by Satyajit Das (FT Press). An
idiosyncratic yet withering analysis of how 30 years of
financial alchemy and excessive credit plunged us into the Great
Recession.

“Fatal Risk” by Roddy Boyd (Wiley). An engaging
reconstruction of how AIG came unstuck.

“The Futures” by Emily Lambert (Basic). A bouncy jaunt
through the history of Chicago’s trading pits.

“Grand Pursuit” by Sylvia Nasar (Fourth Estate/Simon &
Schuster). An absorbing narrative history of economists -- from
Beatrice Webb to John Maynard Keynes -- who pursued the idea
that mankind could control its destiny.

“Greece’s ‘Odious’ Debt” by Jason Manolopoulos (Anthem
Press). A hedge-fund manager explains how his Greek compatriots
gambled away their future -- and how German and French bankers
egged them on. Who’s bailing out whom?

“Guaranteed to Fail” by Viral V. Acharya, Matthew
Richardson, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh and Lawrence J. White
(Princeton). Four professors at New York University’s Stern
School of Business explain how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got so
big and why we must fix them.

“The Hare With Amber Eyes” by Edmund de Waal (Chatto &
Windus/Farrar, Straus & Giroux): This meditative history of the
once mighty Ephrussi trading and banking family defies literary
pigeonholes. Though not a business book per se, it holds deep
lessons about the creation and destruction of wealth.

“The Haves and the Have-Nots” by Branko Milanovic (Basic).
The World Bank economist presents “a brief and idiosyncratic
history” of inequality, from ancient Rome to contemporary
London.

“How the West Was Lost” by Dambisa Moyo (Allen Lane/
Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A reasoned look at how the world’s
most-advanced nations are squandering their economic lead.

“Idea Man” by Paul Allen (Portfolio/Penguin). This memoir
by Microsoft’s co-founder offers a fascinating look at what it
took to build the software behemoth.

“Love and Capital” by Mary Gabriel (Little, Brown). An
exemplary biography of Karl and Jenny Marx and their children.

“Models.Behaving.Badly” by Emanuel Derman (Free Press/
Wiley-Blackwell). The former head of quantitative finance at
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) explores why models failed during the
mortgage meltdown and why modelers must use them more wisely.

“Money and Power” by William D. Cohan (Doubleday). The
sometimes “schizophrenic” behavior of Goldman Sachs comes into
focus in this history by the author of “House of Cards” and “The
Last Tycoons.”

“The New Lombard Street” by Perry Mehrling (Princeton). A
cogent analysis of how the financial crisis turned the Federal
Reserve into America’s “dealer of last resort.”

“Oil’s Endless Bid” by Dan Dicker (Wiley). Petroleum prices
have gone crazy, and a large share of the blame belongs to
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks, argues this Nymex
trader.

“The Price of Everything” by Eduardo Porter (Portfolio/
Heinemann). An energetic tour of how prices work, from cheap
sperm to $4,731 printer ink.

“Punching Out” by Paul Clemens (Doubleday). A blackly comic
journal of what happens after a U.S. factory shuts down.

“Reckless Endangerment” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner (Times Books). A thoughtful contribution to the debate on
whether Fannie Mae really was “ground zero” in the subprime-
mortgage explosion, as some critics argue.

“Red Capitalism” by Carl E. Walter and Fraser J.T. Howie
(Wiley). An eye-opening look at how Communist Party bosses
control China’s economy.